Soup: A Quick and Inexpensive Meal

I like to save money, but with four kids I’m all about the quick and easy. Soup is a great way to fix a healthy, homemade meal for your family and save both time and money. Soup is easy to make. It can be made out of virtually anything in your refrigerator or pantry. It’s very forgiving. Out of parsnips? Throw in a potato. Have some celery going bad in the crisper? Throw it in! Have a two year-old that loves carrots? Throw some in! Best of all, you can easily make a larger batch of soup for only a little more money. Since soup is generally better the second day anyway, make a double batch and serve it for lunch through the week or even freeze some for a quick weeknight dinner when you aren’t up to cooking.

My favorite soup started out as a way to have the Olive Garden’s Zuppa Tuscana at home. As I played around with the recipe, it became less like the restaurant version and turned into a family favorite. Chock full of leafy, green kale and chunks of potatoes, this soup is inexpensive to make and to cut the cost even further you can use homemade broth and can cut back on the amount of sausage used in the soup. Don’t leave out the sausage though. The flavor of the soup depends mainly on the taste of the sausage so use sausage that you love. We find that the spicier, the better. You add just a touch of cream, just to give it a creamy look, not enough to add a lot of extra fat and calories. You can also use milk if you prefer.

Sopa Aguada (Mexican Pasta Soup) from What’s Cooking? is simple to make and can easily be adapted to the tastes of your family. Odds are, you have everything to make this one in your pantry right now!

Bean, Bacon and Chicken Soup from Karin Calloway is another one of our family favorites. I ofen use leftover chicken and whatever bacon I have on hand in this one. Feel free to play around with the proprtions to suit your budget.

Ecuadorian Locro from She’s Becoming Doughmesstic is a potato soup I made recently and I think it has to be my favorite potato soup recipe of all time. The recipe called for Muenster cheese (which I had in my fridge left over from another recipe.) It added a unique flavor to the soup though I think the recipe would hold up with any other cheese.

How about a hearty bowl of French Onion Soup? It always hits the spot and can easily be topped with leftover bread and whatever cheese you have on hand. I often use fewer onions than the recipe calls for, depending on how many I have on hand or if onions are on sale that week.

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It’s so nice to meet you, your family & read your recipes. I read your About page and I feel I know ALL about you, except your name. Do I call you Good Life? 😉

Thank you for the link love. You’re off to a very good start with your blog. Keep going & going. Speaking from experience, it can takes 4 months of writing before you see the same folks coming back to your blog. So, hang in there.

About Me

I'm a stay-at-home mom with four great kids, three cats and two dogs. I want to live the good life but I want to save money too and I'm not willing to live on boxes of mac 'n cheese and hamburger helper to do it!
I deserve to have a life ... a good life!